I Am Daisy Moon
by Isobel Morgan
Summary: Because some people asked for a sequel to my story "Boosh Baby!", this is a story I suppose you'd call it AU , set in the future, featuring Howard's daughter Daisy. I know it's not quite what was asked for, but this is what came to me.
1. Chapter 1

Because some people asked for a sequel to my story "Boosh Baby!", this is a story (I suppose you'd call it AU), set in the future, featuring Howard's daughter Daisy. I know it's not quite what was asked for, but this is what came to me.

**I Am Daisy Moon**

**Chapter 1:**

The first thing you should know about me is this: my life is not normal.

But that's okay, because I love my life, and I wouldn't change a single thing about it.

Not the fact that my Dad, Howard, is away a lot, working as a freelance time-travelling scientist. Not that my Nana has a habit of showing up at random times and places and embarrassing me in front of my friends – literally, she materialises in the middle of everything and starts, well, being an embarrassing Nana.

Not that my uncle Vince consistently steals my hair products every single time he comes over and often forgets to return them. Not even that some of the kids in my class think I'm a weirdo because my Uncle Bollo used to come and pick me up from school. Honestly, you'd think some people had never seen a gorilla driving a Smart car before.

So, me. My name is Daisy Kamaria Moon, to give you my full name. I'm fifteen and I live in a flat in North London with my mum, Miranda, who's a dance teacher, and sometimes with my Dad as well; when he comes home from saving the Universe, that is. My Nana, Ida Moon, comes to stay a lot too, but it's hard to know when she's coming from when she pops by – it could be from before I was born, or it could be next Wednesday because she wants to stop herself from leaving her umbrella behind.

I have blue eyes, like Mum, and this sort of brownish hair which I keep short because it refuses to be either straight or curly without help – most of which I get from my dad's best mate, my 'Uncle' Vince, whether I want his help or not. I think he's a bit disappointed that I don't really care as much about hair and clothes as he does - he's the only guy I know who wears more eyeliner than any of my friends, but he's pretty cool. He runs the Velvet Onion club, and he lets me in for free if there are any bands playing there I want to see. He also looks exactly the same as he did before I was born because he has a secret stash of water from the Fountain of Youth that he stole from my Uncle Naboo. Naboo's pretty cool too, being a shaman and all. I had some really good holidays on his home planet Xooberon when I was a kid.

Beats Disneyland, hands down. I learnt some amazing tricks from those holidays too; this shaman called Kirk used to teach me spells and stuff, until Dad put a stop to it. He never liked me hanging around with Kirk, not just because he's like, 12 years older than me or something (I never figured out how shaman age, there's something weird about it), but because Kirk used to have all these problems with drugs and stuff and Dad thinks he'll be a bad influence on me. I keep telling him, there are people at school much worse than Kirk, but he doesn't listen. I guess that's Dads for you.

So, I have a weird life, but I still go to school and that; I want to go to art school when I finish my GCSEs, maybe be a designer or something. The weirdest thing, I suppose, is the whole time-travel shebang. I mean, there's a lot of stuff in my life that I didn't realise was weird for years, but this I always knew wasn't what most people do.

It's a family thing; my Nana and my Dad can both do it, and I sort of can too, although my Mum doesn't like me trying. She thinks it'll get me into trouble, and I suppose she has a point, especially after Dad lost an eye on one of his 'saving-the-universe' trips and won't tell me how it happened.

All I know is that there's this guy Dad's come up against a few times, who might be an alien but is also a cockney, and he's a mint-obsessed nutjob and the reason why Dad had a chronic phobia of eels. I think of him as the Joker to Dad's Batman, and even though no-one'll tell me anything more about him, I've had nightmares about this scary green guy with one giant white eye.

But Nana's taken me on a few jaunts; time-travelling, that is. She taught me how to see within the space-time continuum when I was really little, so the right part of my brain woke up as I got older, which is supposed to make it easier. Dad didn't want to learn when he was little, according to Nana – that's why he moved away from Leeds and came down to London when he was younger - and didn't start time travelling until after I was born. I really want to learn to do more, but Mum won't let me yet, not 'til I'm older.

And so now, I'm in the middle of the toughest challenge I've ever faced.

Work Experience.

I'm sitting in the office of our old bat of a careers advisor (not a real bat, unfortunately, I'd probably like her a lot more if she was), trying to get her to let me work in the Zooniverse or Nabootique, or even the Velvet Onion (although I'm not holding out much hope for that one; no school's going to let a fifteen year old work in a nightclub, even during the day) because to be honest, they'd be a whole lot more fun than any of the other options she's suggested. And even if they're not, I'd get to hang out with my 'Uncles' and that's always good for a laugh.

"These are rather… odd places you want to work, dear," is her response to my choices, giving me the sort of look I always get whenever I talk about my home life, or my Dad and his friends.

"Not really," I reply, thinking about some of the other places I've been too that make Uncle Naboo's second hand shop look like the epitome of normality. For example, if this woman were ever to see Xooberon, she'd probably go stark staring mad.

"I worked in the Zooniverse a bit last summer. My Uncle Bollo runs it."

"Ah yes, I've heard about him. He dresses up as a monkey or something, doesn't he?"

"No. He's a gorilla."

"I beg your pardon?"

The careers advisor stares at me over the top of her glasses.

"I've never figured out how a gorilla came to be in charge of a zoo" I continue cheerfully. "Nobody'll tell me. All I know is that he took it over about five years ago. I think there was some kind of scandal around the guy who used to run it, like with the Velvet Onion."

The woman is now staring at me as if I'm going to sprout wings or something, but I'm enjoying myself far too much to stop now.

"I sort of remember the guy who owned the club before Uncle Vince took over – this shouty, incoherent man I used to call Uncle Bobby before he ran off with Uncle Bollo's fiancée and nobody talks about him anymore."

"What on earth are you talking about?"

I sigh.

"Nothing. It doesn't matter."

"Anyway, we don't allow students to work in places run by their family anymore. We think it best to offer you the chance to experience something that they wouldn't otherwise get."

I smile.

"My family's not like other peoples. I've learnt more travelling with my Dad and my Nana than I ever have in school."

"Oh yes? And what do they do? Bus conductors?"

'What would you know, you patronising cow?' I think. 'I've been to other planets and I've travelled back in time.'

But I don't say that out loud and instead I say:

"They're both time-travelling freelance scientists. And I'll probably be one too, when I grow up. Or an artist of some kind. I haven't decided yet."

The careers advisor gives me a hard stare.

"I don't have time to listen to nonsense, dear"

I'm not surprised. A lot of teachers say things like that to me whenever I give them honest answers about my life.

"This should suit you fine," she says, pushing a sheaf of printouts into my hand and shoving me out the door.

And so, instead of drinking tea with Uncle Naboo and his assistants, Pete and Leroy, or playing with animals in the zoo, or watching bands with Uncle Vince, I'm here filing and making tea as an office junior-type-thing for a company that ships paper clips around the world.

Now, I'm not knocking paper clips, or normal jobs, but what exactly am I supposed to learn here that I couldn't by apprenticing shamen or visiting eighteenth century France? I mean, I already know how to make tea and alphabetise things – Dad made sure I had that skill down at a very young age, so I didn't go around messing up his jazz. Even mucking out at the Zooniverse is more exciting than this; once you've had to round up the dozen or so overexcited sugar gliders you've accidentally released into the canteen on National 'Dress-Like-A-Tree Day', you can handle most things.

By Wednesday morning I'm so bored I could scream. The people here are okay, but all I seem to do is make umpteen cups of tea and coffee for the other staff, move pieces of furniture around and answer the phone – generally wrong numbers or customers changing their orders concerning the exact type of paperclips needed. Thrilling.

So I'm almost pleased when Nana turns up.

Admittedly, she could have been a_ little_ less obvious in her materialisation and she could have at least tried to dress _vaguely_ normally, but this is my Nana, I should be used to it by now. I blame Uncle Vince for her fashion sense; he's a bad influence on her.

So I'm stood by the photocopier, fashioning makeshift jewellery from paperclips as I wait for some tediously boring document to be done, when there's a brilliant flash of colour and all of a sudden Nana's there in the middle of the room, causing at least three paperclip merchants to choke on their tea.

"Hi Nana."

"Hello Daisy, dear. You're a difficult girl to find."

"What's up?"

"I need your help with something. Are you busy?"

I shrug.

"Work Experience. Nothing I can't miss, but I should stay here all week, you know, for school and that."

"Oh no, this is far more important. Though I did wonder why you were in a paperclip merchants. Is this what you want to do when you finish school?"

"Um, no. This is what the careers advisor arranged for me."

Nana glances around the room; it's your standard office, with cheap furniture, poor lighting and people in badly-fitting suits in shades of grey. She herself is wearing a jumpsuit in a bright swirly pattern, with a matching cape and has her glasses on a neon string around her neck, like a new-rave librarian.

"Hello there," she shouts out to the shell-shocked staff. "I'm Daisy's grandmother. I'm afraid there's a family emergency, so she won't be able to stay for the rest of today. Do you need me to write a note?"

"Why are you shouting?" I whisper in her ear.

"Am I? Sorry, force of habit."

The manager comes over, frowning.

"Is there a problem here?"

I glance at Nana.

"Yeah, sorry. Family emergency, I have to go. Is that okay?"

The frown deepens. He's not a bad sort, this guy, but he isn't half dull. On my first day, he told me off for wearing bright pink hairclips and glitter on my face – not appropriate for the office, apparently – then again for using paper with little cartoon penguins on it when writing memos, and told me yesterday that I'm too cheerful and smile too much. How can anyone be too cheerful? I dread to think what would happen if he met my Uncle Vince; this guy would probably explode.

"Well," the manager hesitates. "If it's an emergency. But I will have to inform the school."

"No problem," Nana breezes. "I've already been there. Here's my number if you need to contact us."

She hands him a card, grabs my arm and we both vanish, re-materialising back at home in the flat.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2:**

**Or: How I Rescued My Dad From A Cockney Nutjob**

"So what's up?" I ask, flopping down on the sofa and grabbing hold of a squishy cushion which for some reason smells like bananas.

"Ah."

Nana sits down next to me, her expression growing serious.

"It's your Dad, I'm afraid. I can't find him."

"What d'you mean, can't find him? I thought you could always find any of us in the timestream? Sort of."

I don't mention the number of times she's gotten lost, or mixed up, turning up in the wrong places or at the wrong times. We all make mistakes, after all

"That's the problem. I don't think he's in the timestream any more, not in the usual sense any way."

I feel a sudden panic grip my guts and twist.

"You don't think he's dead, do you?"

"Oh no," she reassures me, a calming hand on my arm. "I'm sure he's fine. But he does seem to be somewhere… unusual. So I need you if we're to find him. I need another mind who can focus within the timestream, someone linked to him. And we can't tell your mother either, not just yet."

I shrug.

"She'd go mental if she knew, anyway. And if we're careful, she'll never find out."

"That's my girl," Nana pats my arm and gets up.

Don't get me wrong, she loves my mum, but they don't agree about the time-travelling stuff, so it's best not to get involved in it, really. I get up too, putting down my cushion and taking Nana's outstretched hands.

"Now. Close your eyes and think about your Dad. Focus on what he looks like, how his voice sounds, that sort of thing."

I know the drill. She began teaching me how to do this a while back, but Mum disapproved so we haven't had much practise.

So I think about my Dad. The northern accent that's refused to surrender to living down south, even after all this time. The way he used to do his improvisational jazz singing to get me to sleep when I was little. I remember dancing around the living room with him to his favourite records from as soon as I was old enough to stand. I wouldn't ever admit to liking jazz anymore – not exactly cool, and beside, Uncle Vince got me into decent music – but I can almost hear the sounds of jazz trumpeteering and slap bass as I focus.

I think about his face, the moustache that's survived all attempts by my Mum to remove it, the eye patch, the way his face creases up when he laughs.

The more I think, the more I feel the room shift around me, the threads of the space/time continuum unravelling and knotting around us as we disappear once more.

As we materialise, I feel the cold from our surroundings seep into me – I dressed for an indoor office, remember?

"Bloody 'ell, what's this?" shouts out a strange, heavily accented voice.

"Some old bird and a little girl!"

I open my eyes and oh dear god, no.

There he is, no more than a few feet away, in full Technicolour glory, exactly as I always imagined. The peppermint nightmare. The only thing to really scare my Dad.

The Hitcher.

My heart's pounding in my chest as I realise we've materialised straight into a cage at the back of his lair, which is currently decked out like the laboratory of a mad scientist, with bubbling, smoking beakers of liquid and everything.

Nana squeezes my hand and I squeeze back, trying to force down my fear.

Okay, so even my universe-saving Dad's frightened of this guy, but he's faced him numerous times, right? So I can too.

"Where's my Dad?" I demand. "I know he's here. What have you done with him?"

The Hitcher's sidekick, a short, tubby green man with a thin red moustache made from strawberry bootlaces, laughs.

"The kiddie's got guts, eh?"

"Shut yer mouth!"

The Hitcher stomps over to us, the black bird on his shoulder squawking, flapping its wings, which is unexpected to say the least, seeing as how it's stuffed.

His huge white eye bores into me and I steel myself to return his gaze, but it moves over me quickly to take in Nana.

"Ere, I know you. You and that whelp of yours stopped one o' my evil schemes before, din't you?"

Nana gazes back at him calmly.

"More than that, dear. Take it long to grow back, did it?"

The Hitcher slams his cane into the bars of the cage.

"You keep that tongue o' yours still or I'll cut it out a yer!" he bellows, but Nana doesn't even flinch.

"So this must be his little brat then, eh?"

The Hitcher turns back to me.

"I'm Daisy Moon," I reply, with more than a hint of pride in my voice. Well, I am proud. My family's stopped this nutjob more than once, we can do it again.

"Still got both o' your eyes, I see," he gloats. "Yer Dad ever tell you about that, eh? How come he wears that patch?"

He gestures towards his own single eye, but I don't reply, just stare back at him

"Now that was a good day. Din't end too well, mind you."

He glares back at Nana.

"Look, what's your problem?" I interrupt anger and fear battling each other for supremacy. "Why do you have to be evil all the time?"

"I'm not always evil," he replies, sounding almost offended by the accusation, which is kind of weird seeing as how I thought he loved to brag about how evil he is.

"I went straight for a bit, tried to make a go of something that weren't unspeakably nasty. Did a bit of actin'. There was my Zoo, o'course, full of animals that got kicked out a' other zoos for bein' 'orrible. And then there was that farm. Awww, that was terrible!"

"What's so terrible about farming?" I ask, wondering just what the hell would make a one-eyed Victorian psychopath turn to farming.

"Ever tried to farm 'edgehogs, 'ave you? Awww, it was awful. I was findin' spines everywhere, I was! Worst half hour o' my life!"

I sigh. I think I understand now why people get so exasperated whenever they hear about my home life; they think I'm making stuff up, talking nonsense and this must be what it sounds like to people who don't believe a word I say.

"Look, we know you took my Dad. So where is he?"

The Hitcher grins his hideous teeth, his tongue flickering around the edges of his mouth and I have to suppress a shudder.

"He's alright, don't you fret, darlin'. Your Uncle Hitcher's lookin' after him and his little wife."

His wife? Mum! But Nana squeezes my hand again.

"I think he means your Uncle Vince, dear," she murmurs and I relax a fraction.

Of course; people always think Uncle Vince is a girl for some reason. I've had men ask me if we're sisters before. And I think Uncle Vince knows how to deal with this guy better than my Mum would. She's used to our lives being odd, but not to being abducted by Cockney madmen.

"I might be needin' 'em for me little experiment, so they're safe enough."

"What are you trying to do? Why do you need my Dad?"

The Hitcher taps the side of his long green nose.

"That would be tellin'. But seein' as you're 'ere, you might as well help me out. You can both do that time-travellin' thing, can't yer?"

I clamp my mouth shut, sensing that answering him wouldn't be clever, but it doesn't seem to matter. He grins again.

"Course you can. Well, ain't that handy? I grab one traveller and end up wiv three!"

"You're trying to move in time?" Nana asks, horrified. "You can't! The consequences-"

"Oh, blow the consequence!" he bellows, waving his cane in the air, nearly knocking the hat off his assistant's head. The strawberry bootlace man dodges though, seemingly used to ducking out of the way on such occasions.

"You think this is the first time I done it? How d'you think I got 'ere in the first place? Look like I come from round 'ere, do I?"

"But you can't!" Nana's getting more and more agitated at the thought of the Hitcher roaming free in the space/time continuum.

"Shut it, you old trout!"

He bangs his cane on the cage again and Nana falls quiet, but I can tell she's still shocked and appalled at whatever she's worked out his scheme is. I'm frustrated that I don't know enough about time travel or the Hitcher to understand, but at the same time, I'm sort of glad. I don't think I'd like it, if I knew.

"So, I guess we'll be starting with you then."

The Hitcher jabs his cane towards me, and his henchman comes closer, reaching out to unlock the cage.

"Come on, little lady. I won't hurt ya, not unless I 'ave to."

At his words, something inside me snaps. My Dad calls me little lady. No-one else is allowed to, not even my Uncles. Certainly not this insane Polo-eyed, stab-happy lunatic.

"You keep away from us!" I yell, throwing my hands up in front of me as if to ward them off. And to my utter astonishment, they do. And not just that, they stop dead still, not moving an inch. Even the frothing liquids in the beakers on the lab benches behind them stop bubbling and smoking as if instantly frozen.

I turn to Nana, who appears just as motionless, but this turns out to be shock.

"What happened?" I ask her, no less surprised myself.

"Daisy-" she turns to stare at me, wide-eyed in disbelief. "Was that you?"

"I- I think so. What did I do?"

"You stopped time around them. Even I can't do that, nor your Dad. How did you know how to do it?"

"I didn't," I confess. "I just – wanted them to stop, so I sort of, pushed."

"Pushed?"

"Yeah, I don't know what I did."

"Well," she says reluctantly. "Time to sort this out later. Now we have to get out of here and find your Dad."

She reaches through the cage bars and fishes the keys out of the frozen grasp of the Hitcher's henchman. After a moment's fumbling with the lock, the door swings open, and we push our way past the immobile cockneys.

I scan the lab, looking for some clue as to where he's keeping Dad and Uncle Vince, but the room is chaos, crammed full of the most bizarre collection of objects and I don't even know where to start.

Nana starts rifling through the pile of stuff on the nearest table and I follow suit, lifting up hamster cages, various hats, bicycle pumps, a tableau of a stuffed squirrel wrestling a penguin and three boxes of random shoes but I find nothing useful.

Then I look up, across the lab and I know where they are.

"Nana," I say, causing her to look up from the lightning conductor covered in sea shells she's holding.

"You said the Hitcher can bend space, right? Fit things into spaces that should be too small to hold them?"

"That's right, dear. He had his zoo inside a box small enough to carry. I don't quite know how he did it-"

But I'm not really listening. I'm heading across the room, lifting up the dollhouse from the floor, and wrenching off the roof. And sure enough, there inside is my Dad.

He's pacing the floor of what appears to be an Edgar Allen Poe-esque library, all dark wooden panels and hideous furnishings.

The room next door is a full-on 1980's roller disco, complete with glitterball and funky music. Unsurprisingly, skating around without a care in the world, is Uncle Vince. I can't see anyone else in the house, so I have to assume that they're the only two the Hitcher abducted. I have to say, holding my Dad and his best friend in a box in my arms is not an experience I ever thought I'd have, nor is it one I ever want to repeat.

"So- how do we get them out?" I ask Nana, seeing as how neither of them seem to have noticed me.

"I'm not sure. Maybe we could just open the door?"

"Worth a try."

I set the box down on a bench top, peering closely at the front of the house and knocking open the front door with a fingertip.

"Dad?" I call. "Dad, can you hear me? Come to the front door!"

Inside, my miniature Dad stops his pacing.

"Uncle Vince is next door. Bring him too!"

"Maybe we should step away," Nana warns, pulling me back just in time as they come flying out of the door to land in front of us, now thankfully full-size.

"Daisy!"

Dad grabs me tightly in a hug that would be embarrassing in front of my friends, but is very welcome right now.

"Alright?" Uncle Vince doesn't seem the slightest bit affected by what's happened, taking it all in his stride as usual.

"We should go," Nana interrupts. "I don't know how long they'll stay that way."

She nods towards the Hitcher and his sidekick.

"Agreed."

I can feel Dad and Nana starting the jump to take us home, but before it can fully take hold, I wriggle out from Dad's arms and reach out to grab the Hitcher's hat from off his head. I don't want it, but I feel like I should take something from him, just to prove a point.

Back in the flat, Dad's relief turns to worry.

"What happened back there? How did you find us?"

I set down the Hitcher's Polo-adorned top hat on an arm of the sofa, next to Uncle Vince, who's settled down reading Mum's _Heat_ magazine as if nothing at all could be odd about having just been released from a miniature Roller Disco inside a dollhouse in the lab of a mad Cockney scientist.

"I got concerned when you vanished from the timestream," Nana explains. "So I fetched Daisy to help me find you. We ended up in that terrible man's lab."

"Are you alright? Did he hurt you? If he did anything-"

"Relax, Dad. We're fine. He shouted a lot, but he didn't do anything."

I don't feel scared anymore, but I'm grateful for his protective arm around my shoulders, all the same.

"So how did you stop him? What happened?"

"Daisy stopped time."

Dad stares at Nana, open-mouthed, then looks at me, his brow creasing.

"Cool." This is from Uncle Vince.

"You did what?" Dad asks.

"I don't know how," I tell him. "I just sort of, did."

"But – I've never met anyone who could do that! Not even the top people in the Agency can directly control time."

"I don't know if I can control it," I butt in. "Maybe this is a one-off."

Nana shakes her head.

"No, dear. I felt something change around you when you stopped them. Like your aura or something shifting. This is something that comes from you alone, but it's something permanent, that much I'm sure of."

She looks over at Dad.

"It's because she started learning to use her abilities young, I'm sure. Maybe if you had when you were her age, you'd be able to do something similar."

Dad sighs heavily.

"Your mother's not going to be best pleased about this. You shouldn't have ever taken her with you."

This is directed at Nana, who stands firm.

"If it wasn't for your daughter, you and Vince would still be inside that dollhouse."  
"It's not that I'm not glad she rescued us." Dad gives me another squeeze. "But she's still a little girl; she shouldn't have been put in danger like that."

"Oy! I'm not a baby, you know!" I protest.

"To me you are," Dad replies, seriously. "I had to send you away in time once before to keep you out of harm's way. Daisy, you're only fifteen. I don't want you getting involved with people like – that again. It's not safe."

I'm not about to argue with him about tangling with the Hitcher again, but something he said catches at my thoughts.

"You sent me away in time?"

"When you were a few months old. There was… some trouble here, so I got your Nana to take you somewhere safe."

"Is that something to do with how Uncle Vince painted a picture of me before I'd been born?"

Dad glances down at Uncle Vince, who shrugs and goes back to reading about some celebrity divorce or other.

"What makes you think that?"

"It's in the background of that photo you took of Mum when she was pregnant with me. You know, on the day I was born?"

"Ah. Yes, that was then. But I mean it, Daisy. I'm glad you got us out, but you should never have been there in the first place. I don't want you involved in anything dangerous."

I don't push it. No doubt we'll have this argument over and over again until I'm considered grown-up enough to make decisions for myself. Which, knowing my Mum and Dad, will be when I'm about sixty-five.

"Okay."

I perch on the arm of the sofa alongside Uncle Vince, accidentally knocking the Hitcher's hat over. It falls to the floor, making an alarming cacophony of sounds as it does, worse even than any of the unsigned bands I've ever watched audition for Uncle Vince at the Velvet Onion.

"What did you bring that for?" Uncle Vince asks as I carefully pick it up again.

Dad, I notice, does not look happy.

"I wanted him to lose something important too, so he knows what it feels like."

"What's in it?" Dad asks, nervously. "There isn't a girl dressed like an ice dancer, is there?"

I decide not to ask why he thinks that and lift up the top of the hat, which flips open on a hinge.

"Um, is there a reason why his hat would be full of sheep?"

_FIN_


End file.
